Abstract

Renewable energy production is climbing the public agenda in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA region), for reasons of energy security, independence and local value creation. While technical and economic barriers are largely understood, in this paper we investigate the issue of community acceptance. In so doing, we explore the importance of relevant drivers of community acceptance such as level of expected socio-economic and environmental impacts, procedural and distributive justice, and trust. We conducted 232 face-to-face interviews with the local population in Ouarzazate in Morocco, the building site of a flagship project for concentrated solar power in the MENA region. We find that community acceptance is almost universal, particularly because solar power is perceived to be environmentally friendly. At the same time perceived level of knowledge about the project is very low, which is positively linked to the high level of acceptance. Our data suggest that there may be some social desirability bias distorting community acceptance; only long-term experience with the project will show whether hopes for job creation will be fulfilled and high levels of acceptance can be maintained.